craig-chip

[ Submitted to Datafile, but I don't have a record of whether it was
ever published. ]
Notes on the CHIP Meeting
The 1994 CHIP "all night special" got underway around 8:00 pm on
Friday, 24 June 1994. It was held in the same location as last year's
meeting: the Red Cross conference room in Ron Johnson's building.
The meeting more-or-less began with a telephone call presentation from
Eric Vogel. He discussed the Omnibook history and the new features in
the 530 model. (There were copies of a paper written by him about
this topic and a 530 brochure for reference.) He graciously
volunteered his time for the call, but it was cut short by his two
children who understandably wanted their ice cream. Ah, well, they
will understand someday! Preferring ice cream over calculators,
indeed!
Brian Walsh then spoke about his refrigerant database that he was
developing for the 48*X line. It should be avaliable on a ROM card
soon.
He also gave a summary of his trip to the UK in general and London in
particular. This led quite naturally into...
Jake Schwartz then spoke about his trip to Amsterdam. As is now known
to all, the Amsterdam conference did not happen. However, Jake did
attend the morning "where are we and where are we going" meeting that
was held in its stead. He would like to thank the hosts who held this
discussion in English instead of Dutch. He made an audio recording of
this meeting. This then led into...
Craig Finseth then spoke about his ideas for a 1995 conference.
Overall sentiment at the meeting was that yes, indeed, there should be
a 1995 conference in Minnesota, early August was probably a fine time,
yes, people from Chicago would attend, and that it was important to
preserve the "informal" spirit of such conferences. Craig has taken
this advice to heart and that, along with the offer or to to help that
he has received, makes it apparent that he will run some sort of
conference.
Craig Finseth also briefly described his new program, Loki, for the
HP95/100LX. It is an RPN calcualator that tries to make good use of
the screen and keyboard. It also offers bin/oct/hex math, units
(halfway between simple conversions and the full glory of the HP48*
line), and fraction display mode.
Kenneth E. Bourque then described his triangle solutions work for the
HP48* line. A paper was avaiable.
Paul Kettler then described his work on "A Generalized Table-Driven
Decompiler for Keystroke-Programmable Calculators." This is a set of
table-driven programs that runs on the HP48* line that accepts
keycodes (from the -11C and -67A in particular) and converts them back
into key-lable form. A paper was avaiable.
Richard Nelson then spoke about the contest and two writeups that he
had made on byte savings in the 48 line and how to manage equations
and variables. I won't go into the conference any more, other than to
note the prize winners:
Brian Walsh won first prize, a HP48G.
Ram Naresh Gudavalli won second prize, a HP21S, an HP-16C, and
some sort of carry case (I didn't get a good look at it)
Jim Lawson won third prize, which consisted of two -41C program
pacs, a -41C printer, an infrared printer, and a could of "rubber
duck" keyboard overlays for the -71B
Paul Hubbard finished by talking about Ray-o-Vac Renewal batteries.
He thought that they were a good thing.
The meeting finished about 1:30 am on Saturday. Jake Schwartz video
taped the session.